Off, then, to Preston, for the second time in a decade. The traffic's a nightmare on the way up - half-term, rain and a bit of sun - but at least the nice people at Deepdale have cheerily allocated me a parking space.
Since I was last there the press room - once a huge lounge-type area - has been re-located into what was surely the room formerly given to cleaning materials storage, they can't find any teabags and the pies are lukewarm. And that's before a team sheet which thinks Middlesbrough have a striker called Leroy Leta and a player called Jonathan Francis. Still though, some things remain reassuringly unchanged: the press box is still spectacularly inaccessible and there still aren't enough powerpoints.
I like it here though. The people are friendly enough, Preston North End have been admirably punching way above their weight for a while and I can almost smell the tradition, even if the far from completed stadium is far from full and that with half of Teesside travelling to celebrate Gareth Southgate's demise.
Apparently, Southgate is the world's most decent man and certainly he always answered my questions seriously and at some length, but at the one home game I reported on, he kept the hacks waiting until 6.30. I know nobody in the real world cares - and nor should they - about a few missed deadlines, but Southgate is sufficiently media savvy to understand the problems he was causing. And if he's as casually, dislikeably thoughtless in that one regard, it's a fair bet he's like it in others. Oh and him doing that Pizza Hut advertisement was neither right nor funny. He won't, I suspect, be doing one about getting dumped by Middlesbrough. He'll get another job soonish and then go on to be the next decade's Glenn Roader.
The game's OK, actually, but Middlesbrough should have won by whatever a country mile is and that sloppiness is another legacy of Southgate's reign, even without Justin Hoyte and Didier Digard reminding us of his transfer acumen.
Even so, I'm far from sure Gordon Strachan is the answer to these questions. Steve Gibson has always been swayed by a big playing name (Bryan Robson) or the devil he thought he knew (Steve McClaren, Southgate) and as a result Middlesbrough haven't had an outstanding manager since he took over in 1994. Or, if we're being strictly accurate, since Jack Charlton left in 1977, the only truly great manager - and he was truly great at the time - they've ever had. In the meantime, just as in what southerners call "the south", the legacy of Ken Livingstone's tenure as mayor of London comprises the bendy buses and some hero worship of dodgy Hugo Chavez, Southgate leaves us the lumbering Afonso Alves, the distracted Justin Hoyte and home games with Scunthorpe United.
The drive home isn't so bad once the rain stops.

Playlist: Sparks, The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman
Deranged but brilliant. A sort of opera, a vague metaphor for our times and a homage to artistic compromise and artistic non-compromise alike.